How Democracies Perish
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The populist venom being directed these days at politically vulnerable universities speaks against pejorative resort to the word academic. Yet the currently beleaguered state of liberal democracy is definitely not an academic subject, or at least not only an academic subject. It is also an existential one, involving some of the most dismaying and unnerving trends of our time, with potentially ominous consequences for our personal and collective lives. During the Cold War, many Western thinkers were tormented by the thought that liberal-democratic societies could succumb to totalitarian temptation. Jean-François Revel' s 1980s bestselling How Democracies Perish was typical of the genre. Then, in the hinge year of 1989, these dark clouds dissipated virtually overnight. From staggering helplessly at death's door, it seemed, Western-style democracy not only recovered its health but became joyously triumphant and even, according to one celebrated pundit, ideologically uncontestable. But the rebound was less enduring than had been hoped. After the Iraq War, the financial crisis of 2008, the derailing of the Arab Spring, economic dynamism in China where pro-democracy protesters are routinely charged with subversion, electoral victories of xenophobic authoritarians in East Central Europe, increasing support for anti-immigrant and anti-EU movements in Western Europe, the senseless Brexit referendum, the fraying of the Atlantic alliance, and the upset political victory of the forty-fifth president of the United States, the prospects for liberal democracy are once again in doubt. The unthinkable is not yet probable, but neither can it be casually ruled out. Wherever we are headed, we need to look seriously again at the conditions under which democratic government, hollowed out from within, might gradually sicken and suddenly die. To broach the manifold infirmities and potential transience of democratic self-government, I begin with a revealing anecdote and a derivative generalization. During an electoral campaign in Brazil, Albert Hirschman once sighted a billboard that announced: “We are tired of austerity, we want promises.” The facetiousness of the slogan should not distract from its far reaching implications. In reality, much of modern politics is about promising, disappointing, and managing the negative consequences of bitter disappointments. All governments promise and disappoint. One of the signal virtues of liberal democracy is its uncommon facility at mitigating the fallout of political discontent. Mitigation means, most importantly, preventing civic frustrations in the face of unpopular policies and deteriorating conditions from engendering violent confrontations between lethally armed and ideologically polarized citizens or between infuriated citizens and the forces of public order. This is a crucial task, because blood-splattered streets can be a breeding ground for that justly feared authoritarian temptation, precipitating the ruinous breakdown of democracy. A multiparty representative system, where challengers have a reasonable chance of removing and replacing incumbents, may or may not align the preferences of politicians with the preferences of voters. It may or may not produce good governance and economic prosperity. And it may or, may not be at peace with its neighbors. But periodic elections in a pluralistic democracy ideally fulfill another function that they often perform quite well and that helps account for much of democracy's indisputable political appeal. They ensure domestic tranquillity despite the frequency of buyer's remorse or the all-too-common disappointment of citizens in the performance of their own popularly elected rulers. The very possibility of l’alternance, the expectation that a shadow government or rival governing team has a good chance of ousting the incumbents in an upcoming election, subsidizes patience with the deficiencies of the current administration. The mere possibility that the Outs may replace the Ins can dispel the nightmare of having to stare into the faces of an unchanging leadership tiresomely addressing citizens with dubious honesty for the indeterminate future. This is true even if, as is likely, the new incumbents turn out, after their proverbial honeymoon, to be just as disappointing as their predecessors. Well-organized democracies, in other words, systematically channel public disgruntlement inside the system rather than allowing it to fester unaddressed and eventually erupt onto the public squares, where minor clashes can accidentally escalate into uncontrollable violence. One of the principal functions of representative government, according to Max Weber, is to “break the irregular rule of the street.” Rather than burning Dumpsters at intersections, discontented citizens can be lured into organizing for the next elections, expending the fuel of political grievance and letdown on party-political competition, so long as the system is not blatantly rigged against them and they have a reasonable chance of prevailing in the future.
Source Publication
Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America
Source Editors/Authors
Cass R. Sunstein
Publication Date
2018
Recommended Citation
Holmes, Stephen, "How Democracies Perish" (2018). Faculty Chapters. 788.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/788
